GI: People who played Diablo II obsessively acquired a Pavlovian response to the drop sounds—are you keeping those effects, or are you rerecording them?

Wilson: We’re probably going to rerecord them, just because the quality isn’t as high, but the guy who’s doing them is the same person from Diablo II. He’s going to do them justice, for sure. The main thing I actually want to get is a little more distinction, where higher-quality magic items have a more distinct sound.

in Diablo.de: Will Diablo 3 still have a gambling-feature to gamble good rare Items?[indent=1]Jay Wilson: We have not actually made a decision on gambling. We have talked about it and we might do it! It kind of depends on some of the other decisions we will make. We do not have anything against it, it is more like that: Once we make some of the other decisions on how we are going to handle items, we will decide whether or not that warrants an inclusion. But, for the most part, i think we are generally for it!

in Diablo.de: When a character dies, will it lose gold and experience like in Diablo 2?
Jay Wilson: We have not actually decided on the final death mechanic. I can guarantee that you will not lose experience. We are not urging to big penaltys for death. But we want enough of a penalty to be there, so that death has meaning! Like to lose a little bit time, some kind of decrement... We do not currently have a durability, but some kind of ... a gold cost is actually not so bad. And having the player to waste some time, that is certainly an element. Generally we kind of rely on the effect that players do not want to die. You know, you just do not want to. So there is no real reason to add a further "ding" to them for something happening that was already unfavorable to them. But we have not got our final mechanics on that, yet.

The Diablo series is among those touchstone gaming experiences that many of us RPG types grew up relishing. If to this day your MP3 collection isn't complete without "Tristram" and other tracks from Matt Uelman's masterful Diablo 2 score, we understand each other.So, when the opportunity to interview Diablo 3 Lead Designer Jay Wilson came up, we fell over ourselves rearranging our Leipzig GC schedule even though this isn't Ten Ton Hammer's standard MMORPG fare.

Learn how Blizzard hopes to capture the essence of Diablo & Diablo 2 and even take Diablo 3 beyond its predecessors in a variety of ways, not the least of which is an updated control scheme and an fast-paced approach to combat that can only be described as epic, even by Diablo terms. Get the skinny on the boss fights you saw in the D3 trailer, gather some hints on the changes in store for Blizzard's multiplayer portal, Battle.net, and see much more in this ten minute video!